


Bones, Meet the Internet

by kenzz_95



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Could probably be categorized as crack taken seriously, Fluff and Humor, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, This is like...not as wacky as it sounds?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29913318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenzz_95/pseuds/kenzz_95
Summary: When Jim approaches Leonard to be in a TikTok with him, he thinks it'll just be a one time thing. But he soon becomes a regular feature on Jim's account, and gets a whole lot more than he bargained for.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	Bones, Meet the Internet

**Author's Note:**

> Please actually read this note, there be warnings this time:
> 
> 1\. This contains one very brief line where Bones reads something that, if it were it's own thing, would be rated M at least. It's just one line, and because it's a quote in the context of the story rather than something the characters are actually doing, I'm keeping this as a T. But be aware of that, and if a NSFW line will make you uncomfortable, feel free to not read!
> 
> 2\. In this story, Bones is both a Hater (let's be real, that's canon) and also extremely Not Online. The whole idea of the TikTok series they do is basically Jim showing Bones weird things from the internet and filming his reaction. That's not really gone into, but I do list several more niche online communities that Bones thinks are weird. The thing I really want you to be aware of is that they encounter some real person fic about them, and Bones is VERY UNCOMFORTABLE with the concept in general. That's a pretty major point. So if you're a big RPF fan and don't want to read a character you like shitting on something you love, please be aware of that.
> 
> Anyways, hope you enjoy!

Leonard all but dragged himself into the apartment he shared with his best friend, and collapsed on the couch. God, the end of residency couldn’t come soon enough, he felt like he was at least a full year behind on a good night’s sleep.

“Dinner’s in the fridge!” Jim shouted from his bedroom. Leonard simply grunted in response. He was trying to decide if he would rather eat or just curl up on the couch and sleep. Despite not having eaten a real meal in far too long, sleep was winning out. Sometimes he felt like everyone in San Francisco waited until he was on shift to have an emergency.

“You’re not actually gonna get up, are you?” Jim asked, this time standing in his door frame. He was wearing his glasses, thick black frames that somehow made him look older and younger at the same time, some sweatpants, and a t-shirt from a college party that Leonard was about 99% sure Jim had little to no recollection of. Right, it was late. Probably. To be honest, Leonard sort of lost track of time after these long shifts. It was dark, that’s about all he knew at the moment.

“And you call me high maintenance,” Jim rolled his eyes, then after a few minutes of banging around in the kitchen he shoved a reheated bowl of stirfry into Leonard’s chest. It smelled amazing, and really he was hungry so he mumbled his thanks as he dug into his food.

“Rough shift?” Jim guessed, flopping down beside Leonard on the couch.

“Everyone in this town is a reckless dumbass with terrible luck,” Leonard complained, his mouth full of stirfry, but it was just Jim and he didn’t care, no matter what his mama said about Southern manners. “If they could keep their insides on the inside where they belong, I’d much appreciate it.”

“In the defense of reckless dumbasses with terrible luck, at least none of them were me.”

“Low bar. Though I appreciate it, I know it must’ve been a great effort for you.”

“It really was, thanks. So I’m gonna guess your busy day means you don’t want to grade all my exams for me?”

“Jim, I never want to grade your exams for you,” Leonard rolled his eyes. Sure, he always got a brief second wind after he ate something, but grading high school math tests wasn’t even something he wanted to do while well rested and relaxed. He would hate to have Jim’s job.

“Never hurts to ask,” Jim shrugged, “Did you get anything good today or was it just all sprained ankles and the flu for hours on end?”

“It had its share of interesting moments,” Leonard said in between bites of stirfry. God, he was so glad he taught Jim how to cook like a fucking adult. “You’ll never guess what I had to pull out of someone’s ass today.”

“Oh, yes, I love this game!” Jim exclaimed, his eyes lighting up. Leonard couldn’t help but laugh a little at his excitement. Residents always got the shitty - pun not intended - cases and in the ED that meant a lot of pulling stuff out of people’s asses. It wasn’t all the time, but it was far more frequent than it had any right to be. And Jim just about lost it every time. It had gotten to the point where he always thought of Jim when someone came in with something stuck up their ass, which probably wasn’t the best association to have with his best friend.

“Oh, wait!” Jim was suddenly on his feet, “Wait, I have an idea!”

Never in the history of their friendship had anything good come from Jim Kirk having an idea. Actually, “wait, I have an idea” had been how Jim had suggested following each other to graduate school, and that had turned out pretty damn well, but still. Jim ideas were terrifying the vast majority of the time.

“I’ll get my first aid kit,” Leonard sighed, only partly teasing but not making a move to stand up.

“‘What’d Bones Pull Out of a Butt’ would actually make a great TikTok,” Jim said, smiling like he’d just had the best idea in the history of the universe.

“Huh?” Leonard asked. That hadn’t been where he thought this was going at all.

“Ya know, TikTok. The videos?”

“Yes, I know it, but I’m far too old to be on that damn app. And for that matter, so are you. If you start fucking doing the floss or whatever all around the apartment I’m kicking you out.”

“Oh really? You and all your med school debt are kicking me out? I don’t think so. Despite the fact that you sounded about 80 years old just then, I’m staying. I got it to see what my students were talking about all the time, turns out it’s pretty fun. Not all just teens dancing. Most of our friends are on there to some capacity. It’s just you and Spock that aren’t, actually.”

“If you think that’s going to change my mind, you’re wrong.”

“Oh, so you’re more anti TikTok than anti agreeing with Spock. Interesting. But anyways I want to record your story and put it on my TikTok. It’ll be fun.”

“And how many people are gonna see this, exactly?” Leonard asked. He considered himself a fairly private person and didn’t necessarily care to have his face plastered all over the internet, despite that seemingly being a lot of people’s whole reason for existence. 

“Probably not that many, but it’s impossible to tell,” Jim shrugged, “I’ve only made two videos and I maxed out at 100 views, and that’s just ‘cause my students found it. The only people that follow me are our friends anyways.”

“Fine, but no using my name,” Leonard stipulated, “I don’t need whatever the hell it is you’re doing following me around the rest of my life. Shit, I just gave you permission to spread that absurd nickname all over the internet, didn’t I?”

“Yup,” Jim grinned, “But probably just among our friends. And don’t play, you love it. Admit it.”

Leonard would do no such thing, though it was true he’d somehow developed an emotional attachment to “Bones” in all the years Jim had been calling him that. Just for Jim, though. If anyone else called him that, he’d make them regret being born.

“How does this little plan of yours work, anyways?” Leonard asked, in lieu of rising to Jim’s bait. In response, Jim shot him a smile that was so bright it made whatever bullshit this was worth it.

“The video has to be less than a minute long, I’ll do a real quick intro, and then you tell me what you pulled out of someone’s ass today. Easy peasy.”

“Fine,” Leonard sighed, all long suffering and exasperated and way, way too fond for his own good.

“Yes!” Jim pumped his fist excitedly. Leonard then went back to his dinner while Jim fooled around with lighting and openers before he finally started, phone held up in front of his face.

“Hey guys! My roommate is an ER doc and he sees all sorts of stuff. My personal favorite has led to a game we like to call…”

Jim waved at him so he continued the sentence, feeling a bit awkward about this whole thing, “Guess What I Pulled Out of...wait, am I allowed to say ass?”

“Swearing is allowed and encouraged. We can try this again.”

“I’m terrible on camera, Jim, this is a bad idea,” he grumbled. Why he was trying this at all, let alone after a long shift like this, was beyond him. 

“Nah, Bones, you’re fine! The authenticity and complete apathy about going viral is part of your charm, just try to forget I’m filming. Besides, chances are only our friends see this and they know you anyways. It’s not a big deal, and you can swear as much as you want. I can bleep you later if I need to.”

“Fine. I hate that you talked me into this,” Leonard remarked and Jim rolled his eyes,

“Yeah, I know you do. Now come on, let’s run this again.” Jim held his phone up and recorded the intro again before turning the camera to Leonard, who tried to pretend like he was just talking to his best friend as usual.

“Guess what I pulled out of someone’s ass today.”

“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?” Jim asked, a classic first question in this game.

“None of the above.”

“Okay. Plastic, wood, metal, or glass?”

“Plastic.”

“Was the object designed to be some kind of sex toy?”

“Pft, no,” Leonard scoffed, “I should be so lucky.”

“How many fingers wide?”

“Just one.”

“Hmm...amateurs. Do we have this item in our house right now?”

“Yes.”

“Yours, mine, or ours?”

“Yours.”

“How long?”

“Around 6 inches. Individually.”

“Expo marker,” Jim guessed finally.

“Close.”

Jim screwed up his face, as though this was somehow worse, “Washable marker?”

“Plural.”

“Two?” Leonard raised an eyebrow and Jim all but gasped, “ _Three_?”

“Stuck together by the caps. Came apart when the guy tried to pull them out, of course.”

“That’s fucked up,” Jim declared, “Well, this has been What Did Bones Pull Out of Someone’s Ass Today? Any parting words, Bones?”

“Don’t shove things up your ass that weren’t designed to go there you fucking morons.”

“Excellent!” Jim exclaimed, grinning brightly enough to make up for the fact that he was going to put their long running game on fucking social media for some reason. “You did great. My five followers are gonna get a kick out of that. Thanks for humoring me, Bones.”

“Don’t mention it, thanks for dinner.”

“It was my day,” Jim shrugged, “Some guy really shoved 3 markers up his ass? Lengthwise?”

“Well, I don’t exactly think they’d fit if you shoved them in the other way. The human asshole can only stretch so much.”

“That’s not what I meant!” Jim laughed, “I mean, if I were going to shove three markers up my ass - which, by the way, I am not going to…”

“Flared base,” Leonard reminded him. Shockingly this was one of the stupid mistakes Jim hadn’t made in college, and Leonard was determined to make sure his friend didn’t start making it now.

“I _know_ . You’ve been saying that for at least 5 years, I got it. But if I _was_ , which I would not, I would, like, tape them together in a little bunch, ya know, not stack them together by their caps. Which I would not do. I paid good money for my dildo, I’m going to get my money’s worth out of it. It’s just weird, is what I’m saying.”

Leonard rolled his eyes, “And with that lovely thought, I’m going to bed. And yes, I’m aware it’s weird, although still not as weird as the person I saw in med school who got a dead fish stuck up their ass.”  
“Classic,” Jim shook his head with a smile, “Night, Bones. See ya in the morning.”

“Yeah, night Jim.”

It sort of became a _thing_ , after that. A week after the original video Jim made of him, his roommate came up with a segment he called “Bones Reacts” which he basically billed as “I show my grumpy roommate who’s not on social media weird shit on the internet and film his reactions.” It seemed like Jim was filming him, filming _them_ , at least once a week, typically twice, and maybe that should’ve annoyed Leonard. It sure as hell confused him. Their friends got enough of the two of them goofing off and of Leonard bitching about stuff in person, he couldn’t possibly guess who gave a single shit about these videos other than Jim. But that was the thing, Jim cared a lot about it, he had so much fun digging up shocking and weird things from random corners of the internet and showing them to Leonard, asking for his opinion on everything from “cat boys” to anime boobs to potentially dangerous “life hacks”. And it was fun, in a way, even though Jim was intentionally finding the dumbest content he could find and even though he was pretty sure not a soul wanted to hear the weirdest of his medical stories that Jim sometimes filmed. Jim’s enjoyment of this whole thing was catching, and Leonard just had a hard time saying no to anything that made Jim happy like this, so when Jim formally introduced him to the concept of “furries”, all he could do was roll his eyes, shake his head, question the sanity of the world, and watch Jim smile.

So it was fine with Leonard. Months of twice a week videos, of getting used to Jim whipping out his phone and asking if he could film something, it was all fine with him. He could’ve kept going like this for years, probably, without thinking a thing of it. That is, until what should’ve been a perfectly normal shift at work. It wasn’t a super busy day, not that he’d ever be caught dead saying that out loud, and he ended up with a 16 year old girl who had a deep gash in her arm that needed stitches. Nothing crazy or complicated, but that morning had been so crazy that having a slower afternoon so far was a welcome break.

There wasn’t really anything interesting about the case, except for how often the girl kept looking at him, but he didn’t think much of that either. Sometimes that happened. Jim said it was because he had “hot doctor energy”. Whatever it was, it made him a bit uncomfortable but he ignored it and just did his job. At least until he was finishing up the stitches and the girl said,

“Hey, you’re Bones.”

“Huh?” he asked, not looking up from his work but dammit his eyebrows were doing a number right now.

“You and your boyfriend are _so_ cute together.”

“You must be mistaking me for someone else,” Leonard said, “Now hold still.”

Of course she was mistaken. He’d never seen this girl in his life, and he very much didn’t have a boyfriend, hadn’t in years. And she’d called him Bones. The only person who called him that was...now wait just a goddamn minute. _Fuck_ no. It couldn’t be. What were the chances this girl recognized him from one of Jim’s stupid videos? Jim had said the only people who followed him were their friends, that they weren’t likely to get more than 100 views max. But, something akin to dread in him said, that had been nearly 6 months ago. Things could’ve changed. Leonard was a doctor, dammit, not a social media manager or a tech guru, but he knew these things worked off algorithms and sometimes something just took off even if the original poster didn’t have a ton of followers. Oh, Lord, Jim would’ve told him if they’d gone viral, right? Maybe? But maybe not, if he thought that meant Leonard wouldn’t let them do more videos. Shit, whatever was happening here it wasn’t good.

He didn’t allow himself to use his phone at work, but the last couple hours of his shift seemed to drag in a way that emergency medicine rarely did. Now that he was thinking about it, he couldn’t stop wondering just how many views the videos of him on Jim’s page even had. Which, if any, had gotten popular? And what did the finished products even look like? He trusted Jim enough to not humiliate him online, and he frankly had better things to do than to peruse his friend’s TikTok. The second his shift was over, though, he was downloading that infernal app and typing in his friend’s name. And what he saw made his jaw drop.

“McCoy, what the hell are you doing? Quit standing in the middle of the hallway,” Christine said, coming up from behind him. She was a great nurse and a good friend, but Leonard didn’t really want to talk to her right now. But somehow instead he said,

“Holy shit, I think I’m TikTok famous.”

“Oh, honey, you just barely realized that?” Christine asked, sounding quite a lot like she was talking to a toddler and not someone who just found out that their best friend’s TikTok page, which prominently features them, has a million followers, and all the videos seem to have a hundred thousand views at the very minimum. Wait, had she just said…

“You _knew_?”

“Yeah, you didn’t? Did Jim not tell you?”

“No, he fucking didn’t. I’m going to kill that man, I swear it.” And with that, Leonard found it in himself to walk again and stomped right out of the hospital and to the train station where he promptly put in his headphones and started watching the videos with a morbid sense of fascination. They were all pretty much exactly what he thought they were when Jim filmed them, with the only really surprising one being a video from a couple months ago that seemed to tell the story of their friendship from day one until now. It was a weirdly sweet tribute to nearly a decade of friendship, and Leonard let it loop several times, watching as happy photos of the two of them flashed across the screen and Jim talked about their friendship like it was as vital as air itself. Something about it tugged at Leonard’s heartstrings, even though it was all photos he’d seen before and Jim telling a story he knew like the back of his own hand. This, however, wasn’t the issue at hand, despite it being almost painfully sweet, so he turned his focus to the one thing he always swore he would never do online: he read the comments. Thing was, he had to know if that girl today who thought he and Jim were dating was getting that from somewhere or if she just made that up herself because she was 16 and bored. And no, to his great disappointment and confusion, she didn’t seem to be alone in that misconception. As far as he could tell, there was a whole group of people on the internet who thought that he and Jim were secretly dating. Jim had denied this in a couple videos that didn’t feature Leonard, so he hadn’t seen them before, but the denials seemed to do nothing to sway people’s convictions. The comments were filled with the usual people saying things about the video itself along with people saying how cute they were and things like “omg just kiss already!!!” and “they’ve followed each other across the country, boyfriends confirmed”. There were even people who were annoyed that they were being too “will they or won’t they” like this was a fucking tv show and not his actual life. What a fucking nightmare.

Jim wasn’t home when he got home, which was fine with him as that allowed him to hate read thousands of comments on Jim’s videos and rewatch that same goddamn sentimental video that he just couldn’t look away from in peace. Jim volunteered as a track coach at the high school where he worked, and they had a meet that day so Leonard knew Jim wouldn’t be home until later. He also knew that it was his day to cook, so eventually he tore himself away from his phone - okay, his phone died - and made dinner all while still thinking about the fact that he was apparently somewhat famous on an app he’d never even used before. And that everyone thought he was dating his best friend. That, oddly enough, didn’t bother him as much as he thought it would. It didn’t bother him at all, actually. The part where his face was all over the internet and Jim had never felt the need to mention it, that bothered him. But the part where people thought he and Jim were dating? That made him think a lot, but didn’t necessarily bother him. He supposed he could see why, to an outsider, it would look like that, especially given that video Jim had made. Even though it very much so wasn’t that way. They were partners, in a sort of way, and really the idea of more wasn’t necessarily unappealing, when he thought about it…

“Oh God, why do I coach a sport where the meets are so _long_?” Jim walked in the door, already complaining, pulling Leonard from his thoughts. That particular mental road had no satisfying conclusion anyways, so it was probably for the best. “What made me think coaching anything at all was a good idea? I should’ve sponsored a club instead. I’m fucking starving.”

“I made tacos, leftovers are in the fridge,” Leonard said, somewhat absently.

“You’re a godsend,” Jim declared. Leonard waited until Jim had thrown the pulled chicken for the tacos into the microwave before saying,

“So, something interesting happened to me at work today.”

“Oh!” Jim visibly perked up, “Can I film this?”

“You absolutely the fuck cannot,” Leonard snapped, and Jim deflated quickly. It was almost enough to make him feel bad. Almost. 

“Okay,” Jim nodded, trying to take his best friend’s attitude in stride, “So, interesting thing at work?”

“Yeah, some teenage girl came in, had to get stitches. As I was finishing up, she looks at me, calls me ‘Bones’, and tells me that my boyfriend and I are really cute together.”

“Wait, you don’t have a boyfriend, do you?” Jim asked, looking strangely alarmed at the thought, “And I’m the only one who gets to call you...wait, _fuck_.”

There it was. “That’s what I thought,” Leonard nodded, enjoying stringing this along far more than he would simply yelling at Jim for being such a fucking idiot to not tell him what was going on. “So I get to thinking, maybe one of those videos you put online got mildly popular.”

“Oh fuck.”

“And I was curious which one, figured I’d never actually looked at your page before, might as well find out.”

“Oh _fuck_.”

“Only to find out that you have a million fucking followers on those stupid videos you do with me and never once saw fit to mention it!” Leonard said finally, letting the other shoe drop. Jim’s eyes were wide, somewhat panicky, and probably what his looked like when he realized he was the unknowing star of a popular TikTok channel. Good, serves him right.

“Oh fuck,” Jim repeated.

“Oh fuck is right, Jim! Dammit, kid, you said 100 people max would see those! And now we have a whole bunch of bored teenagers who think we’re dating!”

“Look, I can fix this,” Jim promised, which Leonard knew was a lie even though he wasn’t on social media. Well, at least not intentionally.

“No you can’t.”

“Fine, you’re right, I can’t. But, look, I never lied to you. That first video, I really thought only our friends would see it, but it sort of blew up. I never mentioned it, thought you’d freak out, and one hit doesn’t necessarily make another but, well, you see how that turned out. And then I was just in too deep, I knew you’d be pissed and then people started saying all that shit about us and I knew you’d think it was so goddamn embarrassing and I was having too much fun making them. Not for the views, I don’t really give a shit, but it’s something fun to do with you and I like getting to see you from like an outside perspective and…”

“Jim,” Leonard cut him off, because sure, he was pissed, but the way Jim was panicking it sounded like he thought this was friendship ending stuff right here, which couldn’t be further from the truth. “Shut up.”

“Right,” Jim nodded, “Sorry. I just...sorry. I’ll stop making them.”

Leonard surprised himself by saying, “You don’t need to do that.” 

“Huh?”

“Look, Jim, the fact that millions of people have seen those videos is weird and I need a minute to wrap my head around it, but I ain’t mad at you for that. I just wish you had _told me_.”

“Cover up is worse than the crime, yeah,” Jim mumbled, “Look, Bones, I’m sorry. I know I should’ve told you, and I know this doesn’t make it right but you never exactly asked about what happened after we finished filming them. You never seemed to really care.”

“You’re right. I don’t care, and that doesn’t exactly make it better. Filming them can be fun, even though you’ve showed me just about the weirdest and most cursed things the internet can offer, but frankly I don’t give a shit what you do with them when we’re done. You could just delete them for all I care. I need a bit to come to terms with all this, but we don’t need to stop doing them, and you and I are gonna be _fine_ , even though I wouldn’t mind smacking you upside the head right now. Gotta admit, the fact that all these kids seem to think we’re secretly dating is actually pretty funny.”

Jim turned an odd shade of red at that, and scratched at the back of his neck awkwardly, “Really? I would’ve thought you would’ve been, I dunno, embarrassed or mad about that.”

“I’ve been accused of worse things than datin’ you,” Leonard said, and it was true. It was hardly an insult. “That said, these people absolutely do need to fuck off and mind their own goddamn business, but I can’t say I’m all that surprised they came to that conclusion, not after that whole ‘how it started versus how it’s going’ video you did.”

“Oh, you saw that,” Jim still looked painfully awkward about this whole thing, “I never asked you about that, ‘cause all the pictures were on my Instagram already. That video isn’t exactly my fault. It’s not like I said anything that wasn’t true.”

“The whole bit about us going to grad school together was phrased a bit…” Leonard trailed off, not sure how he wanted to end that sentence. Dramatically? Homeoerotically? Jim seemed to pick up on it though, because he crossed his arms and said,

“But Bones, we _did_ go to grad school together.”

“Yes, we both independently applied to and got accepted to universities in the same city and put having our friend around in the pro column when making decisions.”

“I couldn’t explain the whole process, it was a one minute video! And I have corrected people when they call you my boyfriend on multiple occasions. I maintain that this is not my fault. Maybe I can fake being in a relationship, if you want them to stop. It doesn’t really bother me.”

Leonard really only had nearly a decade of friendship with Jim Kirk to blame for the idea that came into his head next, much less his decision to voice it. “Nah. In fact, I say we play it up just a bit. Keep ‘em guessing.”

Jim raised his eyebrows. Not as high as Leonard could, but with his thick brows it was still an impressive sight. “Seriously, Bones? Some people are already feeling like I’m baiting them into something.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly why. This is our lives, we’re not characters in a television show, they need to keep their noses out of our business. If they get pissed that the lives of two actual human beings aren’t quite what they want them to be, that’s on them, not us. Let ‘em be mad. In fact, let them be more mad. They deserve it. They can go moon over fictional characters like the rest of the weirdos on the internet.” Maybe he should’ve been kinder to the weirdos watching Jim’s videos, but if there was anything Leonard hated - which, actually, there were a lot of things - it was people prying into his private life. They could all get the fuck out of his relationship with his best friend, thank you very much.

“If you say so, Bones,” Jim shrugged, smiling now, easy and happy and oh so gorgeous. “Let’s give you a week to adjust to your newfound internet fame before we film another one. Oh, I just can’t wait to show you bronies.”

“Show me what?” Leonard asked, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“You’ll find out, Bones! And don’t you google it, that’s cheating.”

About a month into Leonard actually knowing about the whole thing where he was mildly TikTok famous, Jim talked him into doing a live video. What they were going to talk about when they were used to filming quick, snappy, less than 60 second videos was beyond him. All Jim would say is that he’d found something that would make him question the sanity of all people online, although how that was different from their usual fair he didn’t know. But truthfully he didn’t mind all of this - although he still didn’t give a shit if even one person watched the videos - so he went along with it. God, he’d do any stupid thing for Jim.

They settled onto the couch and Jim slid his arm around Leonard’s shoulders, a gesture they’d done before but always included in their videos now because Leonard wanted to annoy nosy internet busy bodies, and Jim started the video. They made small talk for a while until a fair amount of people joined, then Jim looked at Leonard with an absolutely wicked look on his face and asked,

“So, Bones, what do you know about fan fiction?”

“Aren’t those the stories teenagers write about Luke Skywalker fucking Bilbo Baggins or whatever the hell?”

“That probably exists, yeah. And ya know what, next time we do one of these we should just look for the most bizarre shit people have written. But, Bones, I was wandering around the internet a few days ago and I noticed that some of our more...avid viewers have written some stories about us! And, since, seriously guys even I think that’s a bit invasive, I think we’re well within our rights to lightly drag them as long as we don’t say the author’s name!”

Oh dear God, this wasn’t going anywhere good. Leonard tried not to blush too much, after all he had no idea how many thousands of people were watching this, and said gruffly, “I think we’re more than well within our rights to severely drag them, actually.”

“Right,” Jim nodded, “Well there’s a good chance these were written by minors, as disheartening as that is for some of them, so we’re not gonna be too mean. Just a light roast. Anyways, I’ve pulled some of the weirdest passages I could find from these, and let me tell you reading these things was a trip and a half, and I say we take turns reading them. How’s that sound?”

The answer was “bad”, and Leonard had no desire to find out what Jim had unearthed here, but they were live so he forced himself to play along. “Fine, whatever, what weird shit do you have for me this time?”

“I’m glad you asked, my friend!” Jim grinned and handed Leonard his tablet, pulled up to a document, and Jim grabbed his computer. 

“The fuck does ‘A/B/O’ mean?” Leonard asked, scrolling through the document and skimming the headings Jim had put on there.

“Oh, I’m glad you asked! I actually had to look this one up myself! It’s basically wolf erotica.”

If Leonard had been drinking something he would’ve choked, probably.

“ _Wolf erotica_???”

“Well, more or less. Best as I can tell it’s a universe where humans have the sexual biology and, like, social hierarchy of wolves, but as someone who was obsessed with wolves when they were 12 it’s actually not all that accurate.”

Leonard looked dead into the camera as he said, “I’m judging all of you.”

“They know!” Jim laughed, “Mostly they think it’s funny. Gotta laugh at yourself, ya know? You can start with the first excerpt and I’ll read the second one. I think you’ll have some medical takes on this.”

“Fine,” Leonard sighed, trying to mentally prepare himself for whatever he was going to read. He had just about zero desire to do this, and the idea of reading anything about him and Jim, especially anything sexually explicit, made him deeply uncomfortable. But here he was, humoring Jim even though he knew his friend would stop the video at a single word from him. 

“ _‘Lube?’ Bones asked, breathless, gasping as Jim’s hard cock ground against his. ‘No time,’ Jim grunted, licking his fingers and slipping one into Bones’ entrance, ‘If I’m not inside you right now…_ I’m not fucking reading this, Jim.”

Leonard was pretty sure he was blushing from his chest to the tips of his ears, and he was overcome with the need to be anywhere but here. 

“I’m done,” he said, shoving the tablet into Jim’s hands and looking into the camera, “This is fucked up. We’re real people, not playthings for you to twist into your fucking fantasies. It ain’t right, and I’m done. Fuck all of you.”

Then, without a look back at his friend or the camera, he stalked out of the living room back to his bedroom and slammed the door.

“Fuck,” he cursed, kicking at a pillow sitting on the floor. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Goddamn privacy invading internet weirdos. Leonard couldn’t get over how absolutely violated he felt right now. This would’ve been bad regardless, but the fact that it felt like they’d lifted the passage - medical unrealities notwithstanding - from fantasies that, sure, he’d entertained more than a few times, that made it all the worse. And, wouldn’t you know it, he couldn’t even have some privacy to be mad about this because Jim burst through the door with a hurried,

“Oh my God, Bones, I’m _so sorry_.”

“Fuck off,” Leonard snapped, but Jim looked proper apologetic and _worried_ , so he didn’t press the issue when his friend ignored his demand and instead made himself at home on his bed.

“That was too far, even for me, it was a terrible idea and I never should’ve showed that to you, much less made you read it live. I’m so sorry, I thought you would just think it was funny and stupid, like you did with people thinking we were a couple in the first place, but this is different and I should’ve known that.”

“It ain’t your fault,” Leonard shook his head, helpless in the face of Jim’s absolutely _wrecked_ expression, like the fact that he’d done something to make his best friend that uncomfortable was killing him. “It’s those goddamn people who follow you that don’t have a shred of respect for the privacy of actual people and…”

“They’re just kids having fun, Bones, it’s not their fault either.”

“You’re defending them?”

“Well, no, it’s not really my thing, but we were never meant to read those. To them, it’s just harmless fun.”

“It doesn’t feel harmless,” Leonard mumbled, sitting next to his friend on the bed, feeling as emotionally naked as he apparently was in all those little stories people wrote.

“I know,” Jim nodded, wrapping his arm once more about Leonard’s shoulders. And as mad and uncomfortable as he was right now, Leonard leaned in. Jim was warm, a constant presence, a comfort, even when he wasn’t thrilled with him. “If I could go back in time and knock some goddamn sense into myself for thinking this would just be a funny idea, I would.”

“Don’t you have a live stream you should be finishing? People are gonna be mad about how that went,” Leonard said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. He was pretty sure he failed miserably. 

“I don’t care,” Jim rolled his eyes, Leonard could just hear it in his voice, “It was never about the views or the followers or whatever, Bones, it was always about you and me.”

There was something about that that made Leonard pick his head up and look at his best friend. Jim’s bright blue eyes were swimming with something so wide open and vulnerable that it nearly took his breath away. He couldn’t escape the feeling like there was something important, meaningful, _life changing_ on the tip of Jim’s tongue, but before Jim could say it he shook his head,

“Don’t let them win.”

“What?” Jim asked, “It’s not about that.”

“Whatever ‘it’ is, it’s very much about that to me right now. So whatever’s floating around in your head right now, you keep it there. I can’t handle…”

“I wasn’t going to,” Jim cut him off, “And I’m sorry. About all of this. I’ll leave if you want, I just...I wanted you to know that.”

Despite privacy being what he’d thought he wanted, Leonard wrapped his hand around Jim’s wrist and said, softer than he intended, “No, stay.”

The evening of the live stream incident, Jim put up another video, a minute long apology where he, perhaps predictably, took all the blame upon himself. It wasn’t fair, it had been Leonard who freaked out and those weirdos who’d written that shit in the first place, but Jim never saw fit to accept just part of the blame. It was, apparently, his fault for everything from not realizing that his own best friend wouldn’t be comfortable with that to his “invasion of writers’ spaces”. It was a little bit bizarre, but characteristically self sacrificing, and he ended it all by announcing that they were going to take a hiatus from the app because he didn’t want to risk driving a wedge in their friendship. It was sweet and sincere, despite the shocking speed Jim always talked at during these things, and Leonard was left going to bed that evening with a whole lot of questions. He almost wished he’d allowed Jim to say what he’d clearly been thinking about saying earlier that day. But it really just wasn’t the right time.

Nearly two weeks into no new videos and Leonard couldn’t stop thinking about how maybe he was getting in his own damn way with this whole thing. So what if Jim had been about to say that friendship wasn’t the only thing he felt for him? Granted, Leonard didn’t have a shred of proof of that, but that _look_ in Jim’s eyes, suddenly he couldn’t see anything else. And so what? Was he really going to get in the way of something he wanted just because he didn’t want a handful of people on the internet with no respect for privacy to “win”? And that’s the thing, he realized that he did want that with Jim. Their relationship had long been stable. Impossibly close friends, but never anything romantic or physical. Could they even make a change this far in? How would that even work? Leonard wasn’t sure, but he also was increasingly unsure about his assertion that there had never been anything romantic between him and Jim, so he considered it probably worth exploring, even if it would make some people he was pissed at happy. It took a little bit of mental work, but he eventually came to the conclusion that his realization that his all consuming love for his best friend maybe wasn’t so platonic after all wasn’t actually the result of said internet weirdos. After all, they were hardly the first people to mistake him and Jim for a couple. Most people that met them assumed that, actually. And maybe there was some truth in that, but it had never really made Leonard think before. The big change, he figured, had come from that damn friendship retrospective video Jim had made, the one that he’d watched more times in the six weeks than he cared to admit. Jim had said once that he liked making the videos because he liked looking at Leonard from an outsider’s perspective, and that’s really what that video was for their relationship, and it had made Leonard _think_ , goddammit. It did, in a way, sound like a love story. And maybe it was. But he wasn’t going to broach the topic with Jim yet. Not until he could completely divorce it in his head from the idea of nosy people online who agreed on that assessment of their relationship. And he just wasn’t there yet, but as it turns out Jim wasn’t keen on waiting.

Once a week, on a day when neither of them was working, Jim and Leonard would cook dinner together. A proper dinner, not just something they whipped together real quick. It was a long standing tradition and goddamn they really were dating, weren’t they? But they didn’t own a table, so they always ate side by side on the couch. Jim was quiet that night, mostly content to eat in silence, at least until he said, apropos of nothing at all,

“It’s weird that we haven’t done this before, right?”

“We do this every weekend,” Leonard said, confused. Jim just grinned and shrugged, forced confidence at odds with the rather guarded look in his eyes, that just wouldn’t meet Leonard’s. Just as Leonard was about to chalk this all up to the many mysteries of Jim Kirk, Jim surged forward and pressed his lips to Leonard’s. Leonard let out a startled little noise, because he seriously did not see that coming, but like hell was he going to do anything other than completely embrace it. He laughed a little under Jim’s lips at the absurdity of this all, then grabbed Jim and pulled him even closer, sinking into the kiss. Leonard could feel the tension melt away from Jim’s frame as they kissed, all new and exciting but at the same time familiar and comfortable. They kissed for a while, sweet and happy and the precursor to nothing in the short term but _everything_ in the long term, before Jim pulled away, licked his kiss swollen lips, and repeated,

“It’s weird that we haven’t done that before, right?”

For some reason, in spite of the blinding level of happiness he was feeling right now, his stupid mouth just said, “You better not just be doing this because some people online…”

Jim cut him off mid-sentence by kissing him again, just a quick peck but it was certainly effective.

“Shut up, Bones. I did that because I love you, and because I wanted to. Your desire to be as obstinate as you possibly can at all times better not get in our way with this. Because I know you feel the same way, even if you don’t know it yet.” There wasn’t a shred of self-doubt in that, Jim was so certain that Leonard loved him too, and obviously _he did_ , but it was a bit funny.

“You think you know my heart better than I do, Jim?” Leonard asked, taking hold of Jim’s hand so he wouldn’t think it was a rejection. Jim smiled, still shockingly wide open and vulnerable even as he teased,

“Doesn’t really take much.”

“This from you?”

“Shut the fuck up, Bones,” Jim laughed, then kissed him again, sucked on his bottom lip for a second then pulled away just as Leonard abandoned his annoyance of the tactic because god _dammit_ that felt good.

“I love you too, brat,” Leonard rolled his eyes. Jim grinned like he just won the lottery,

“Oh, fuck yeah. Knew it.”

“I knew it too, ever since I watched that damn video you made about our friendship and you were talking like this was the single most important thing in the universe.”

Jim smiled again, softer this time, sweeter. “This _is_ the single most important thing in the universe to me.”

“It is to me, too, Jim. And I promise not to get in our way about this. Just...one condition.”

“Name it.”

Leonard was pretty sure that if he asked Jim for every star in the sky, he would find a way to make that happen. It was almost overwhelming, but also warm and comfortable and _everything_. In spite of all that, Leonard adopted a probably thoroughly unconvincing smirk and said, “When we start making videos again, TikTok never learns of this.”

Jim laughed, “Of course not. You’re not the only stubborn bastard in this relationship, ya know?”

“You sure do give me a run for my money in that respect, darlin’,” Leonard grinned, trying the pet name on for size. If the way Jim shivered just a little was any indication, then it was definitely going to stay. 

“Does this mean we can make videos again?” Jim asked, and really that wasn’t relevant right now so under the guise of trying out Jim’s idea of kissing him to shut him up, but mostly just because he wanted to and could now, Leonard leaned in and captured Jim’s lips with his own in lieu of saying anything else. From the way Jim sighed into the kiss, Leonard was pretty sure he didn’t mind.

**Author's Note:**

> Gonna blame Hannah from the McKirk Discord for this one again. She drew a funny drawing of TikTok Jim and my mind took off.
> 
> Disclaimer: please know that Bones' opinions here don't necessarily reflect those of the author. Just because Bones thinks, for example, that furries are weird or that RPF is creepy, doesn't necessarily mean that I do. All love to all the niche online communities. Hope you're having fun.
> 
> (Also don't put things up your ass that aren't meant to go there. That opinion of Bones' most certainly DOES reflect the author's.)


End file.
